This invention relates generally to interfaces for viewing content, and particularly to a speed-dependent automatic zooming interface for viewing content.
A commonplace application for computers and computerized devices is the viewing of content such as web pages, graphic images, maps, word processing documents, etc. For most documents and images, their size is too large to view them in their entirety on a display at full scale, even on relatively large displays. For example, a document of more than one or two pages in length, or an image file having a width greater than 1,024 pixels and a height greater than 768 pixels, is typically not completely viewable at full scale on a typical seventeen-inch monitor.
Most operating systems and application programs therefore have instituted scroll bar and zoom mechanisms for navigating such large documents and images. Scroll bars allow a user to change what part of a document or image is currently viewable on the display. For example, a vertical scroll bar allows a user to navigate a document or image in the vertical direction, while a horizontal scroll bar allows a user to navigate the document or image in the horizontal direction. A user thus is able to change what portion of the document or image is currently viewable on the display by scrolling through the document or image. One common input device, a mouse having a wheel, is particularly well suited for scrolling through the document or image in one direction at a time, by using its wheel.
Using scroll bars to navigate a document or image does not change how much of the document or image is currently viewable on the display, though. The scale of the document remains constant. Therefore, in order to see more or less of a document or imagexe2x80x94that is, to change the scale of the document or imagexe2x80x94zooming is used. For example, an image may be xe2x80x9czoomed outxe2x80x9d so that the entire image is viewable on a display at one time. The trade-off, however, is a loss of visible detail of the image, since the resolution of the display itself remains constant. Thus, at 100% scale, full detail of the image may be visible on the display, but only part of the image is typically viewable, whereas at 25% scale, the entire image may be viewable on the display, but with a loss of visible detail.
Therefore, to quickly navigate a long document or a large image, a common approach is to first zoom out so that the entire document or image is viewable at reduced visible detail, locate the general part of the document or image that is of interest, zoom in on that part, and finally navigate that part to find the exact point of interest. This requires much user input: the user first has to manually invoke a zoom mechanism to zoom out, then perhaps use scroll bars to locate the general part of interest, again use the zoom mechanism to zoom in on this general part, and finally again use the scroll bars to find exactly the point of interest within the document or image.
Many users may therefore simply opt to just stay at full scale, and quickly scroll through the document or image vertically and/or horizontally to locate the exact point of interest by trial and error. For example, within a word processing document, the user may know that the point of interest is located somewhere in the middle of the document. Therefore, the user may scroll down very quickly through the document, such that the document is not readable because of the speed at which the user is moving through it, and occasionally slow down or stop scrolling to determine if further scrolling in the same direction is needed, or if the desired point has in fact been overshot. If overshot, then the user must begin scrolling in the opposite direction. All this continues until the desired point of interest is finally reached.
These and other prior art approaches for navigating a long document or large image thus leave much be desired. They do not allow easy and precise navigation through a long document or large image to quickly locate a desired point within the document or image. For this and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.
The invention relates to speed-dependent automatic zooming through content such as documents and images. In one embodiment, a method first receives an input, such as a user input on an input device like a mouse or a trackball. Other input devices amenable to an embodiment of the invention include self-centering input devices, such as self-centering joysticks, levers, etc. The input is mapped to either speed of navigation through a content space, or scale of the content space while being navigated. The other of speed or scale to which the input was not mapped is then determined, based on the relationship that scale times speed equals a constant. The content space is then navigated, based on the speed or scale mapped from the input, and the scale or speed determined.
Embodiments of the invention provide for advantages not found within the prior art. In one embodiment, a single input, such as movement of a mouse, ultimately controls both speed of navigation through a content, and the scale of that content while being navigated. For example, while content is being navigated quickly, the scale of the content is reduced, so the user can still easily get a sense for where he or she is navigating within the content. Then, when the user slows down navigation, the scale of the content automatically is increased, so the user is able to easily particularly locate an exact desired point within the content. This is as compared with the prior art, which requires separate user inputs to control scale of the content while being navigated and speed of navigation through the content.
Furthermore, it is noted that in one embodiment, perceptual benefits are provided for the user. For example, within the prior art, if the user scrolls too fast, the perceptual scrolling speed, which is the visual speed of the document across the screen, becomes too fast to read the document, and the user can become disoriented. However, in an embodiment of the invention, the perceptual scrolling speed remains constant, by controlling the zooming level based on the relationship that scale times speed equals a constant. Thus, the user does not become disoriented within the document.
The invention includes computer-implemented methods, machine-readable media, computerized systems, and computers of varying scopes. Other aspects, embodiments and advantages of the invention, beyond those described here, will become apparent by reading the detailed description and with reference to the drawings.